This page serves as a dish to collect the things that dribble out of my head. Hopefully this will function as a place for reference to keep track of varies studies persued over time, and maybe someone else will actually read it too. :)

Thursday, January 24, 2008

My comment on slashdot to the above linked article on DRM free music, and comments by slashdot readers:

Why are people negotiating with the recording industry? The music industry will always be strong as long as people value culture. How that industry exists will always change the way it looks. For a brief period of time, a recording industry was born: A group of non talents that could leech money from talented people by creating distribution methods prohibitively expensive to the average band. As these magicians took all the band, they made you famous by eventually putting you and your art on tv that made them even more money. As it had been mentioned above, the recording industry is taking away the last pieces of profit on music by birthing their own talent and using technology to give the appearance of talent. Now that they have "taped into the source", they don't even need real talent to sell out for them to make big money because they already owned the music before it was created. Further, the junk they spout out can easily become "famous" because they write the news on "What's Hot!".

The recording industry tried and has nearly killed the music industry, an industry that used to be about free speech, expression, enjoying life, and sharing sorrow. The internet is the first chance at getting that integrity back. The internet can and needs to kill the recording industry to allow the music industry to come back. Music industry will be strong when artists can be completely independent and are no longer tempted to buy into the pyramid scheme that has for so long been damaging to our culture. The days of packaging information into virtual units and selling them for money is ending.

ALL music should be free for distribution across the internet and it would be in bands best interest to make it happen. Popularity would rise from real talent, and not what the recording industry tells us is hot. The only fair restrictions should be to protect consumers as trade mark law intended. The only "DRM" that should exist would be one that allows a consumer to authenticate music, the same way RSA is used to authenticate transmissions. Watermark digital content to artists are certain to be recognized for their own work, and not renamed by some DJ or cover band. The demand for live concerts would swarm, just as it has in Brazil where "piracy" has birthed a previously non-existent music industry that is only getting stronger. Music will return to the way it was meant to be with live concerts, and t-shirts. CD's would be sold as a luxury item for $3-5 where all the money goes to the musicians, and you have shown your appreciation for the band. Piracy of these albums and their cover art would make no sense when the music is already freely available.

Free Culture will kill the economy and destroy profits for: No talent hacks, shady middlemen, distribution cartels, lip syncers, talent scouts, concert promoters, music 'stores', or any other person that has made a living exploiting musicians. Oh how will our economy ever survive? Is our economy so dependent on crooks that if we took them out it would collapse? How sick would that be if it were the truth? and if true, I think it is time for that change to take place. Oh god, it would be like... talented artists would be making money from their art... and fans would rejoice in music!

And while it is still only hope, I look forward to seeing the RIAA dying the horrible flaming irritable bowel syndrome death they deserve on March 25 when EMI will do what it should have done years ago.

The Recording industry will never accept the fact that the recording industry is DEAD! RIAA has NO purpose to the creative artist. The model has always been pay RIAA to produce and advertise an album. RIAA gets all profits from CD sales. In return artist gets famous and people buy concert tickets. RIAA owns large amphitheaters, RIAA gets a big part of concert ticket ticket sales, and the rest is split up between the artists. Bands get all proceeds from t-shirt sales.

The internet has made this model obsolete. Artists can build recording studios from free recycled products, and make CD masters on a computer with excellent quality with FOSS (audacity, etc), and mass produce them for less than $2000. Give away the CD online, and post videos on YouTube for promotion. No more need for big concerts for small bands to be heard or noticed or sell tickets. For fans that want to show their appreciation they can buy CD’s at concerts or online that include album art and such. At $5 for a CD, bands would make an unprecedented killing on profits versus the 5 cents they get for every sale over 2 million, if in the past they have sold over 5 million of any 2 CD’s.

Copyright law, for the purpose of actually protecting artists, was necessary because IN THE PAST, it was hard for individuals to distribute their own work. big media solves the problem of the market barrier expense. The market barrier today is FAKE and created by big media through copyright law that HURTS artists.

If the free exchange of ideas was instant, and copyright law, as it is in the US was gone, artists would be put on a level playing field where talent produces profit controlled by fans, not big media. No more of the .0001% famous artists and the 99.9999% that only get to do it because it is what they love.

According to ‘the law’ (government, not society) and big media, If you have ever sung Happy Birthday, and didn’t pay a royalty, YOU ARE A THIEF! If you listen to CD’s on your computer YOU ARE A THEIF! If you have ever played music in a CD player in such a way that it is audible to another person, YOU ARE A THIEF! If you have paid license to (most often Microsoft) software and even TRY to fix it, YOU ARE A THIEF! If you buy software and individually use it on more than 1 computer, YOU ARE A THIEF!

If it must persist that we will use that as our definition of stealing, then YES, LEGALIZE STEALING!!! Don’t be manipulated by BS nomenclature and jargon.

The only necessary thing that is necessary to protect creative works and artists is trademark law; other people may not produce a creative work and intentionally misrepresent it off as somebody else’s, commercially or otherwise. That should be the purpose of a watermark, authentication, not tracking down which credit card was used to purchase the copy of a work that was distributed and redistributed in a way that was unintended by the authorized distributor.

The market HAS changed, and dying tyrants will never put down their sword. With their last breathe and their last gold they will try to tell us what to do because it is in THEIR best interest.

But we are free at last when we choose to accept it in our hearts and minds.

A must see! “Steal this Movie, Part I & II”. Get it from he Pirate Bay. (Don’t worry, they want you to copy it) GREAT film on the history of ‘Pirates’ through out history that believed in the free exchange of ideas, and the people that tried to hunt them down beginning with Guttenberg. Yes, Guttenberg was a pirate (as were considered all “publishers” in that time. ) He was hunted by governments and their equivelant of “Big Media”, but never gave up on what he believed in.

Oh, another note to add after doing a little research, copyright infringement in no form is theft. See Dowling v. United States 473 U.S. 207 (1985). Infringement is infringement, not stealing or theft, affirmed by United States Supreme Count. Another great one to throw in peoples faces, like Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act 15 U.S.C. § 2301 any time a retailer tells you “sorry, your warranty doesn’t cover that”. Anyway, not to distort the issue, there is still the NET act (No Electronic Theft) which provides criminal penalties in cases of non-commercial infringement which has only been in effect since 1997.

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Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and nothing presented in this blog is meant in any way to be legal advice. That is what lawyers are for (unless they work for the public defenders office of Santa Clara County in which case you should get a real lawyer, or a priest to perform last rights.